Book excerpt: This monography is, in the first place, a commented guide that invites the reader to plunge into the thrilling world ofzeta functions and their appli cations in physics. Different aspects ofthis field ofknowledge are considered, as one can see specifically in the Table of Contents. The level of the book is elementary. It is intended for people with no or little knowledge of the subject. Everything is explained in full detail, in particular, the mathematical difficulties and tricky points, which too often constitute an insurmountable barrier for those who would have liked to be come aquainted with that matter but never dared to ask (or did not manage to understand more complete, higher-level treatises). In this sense the present work is to be considered as a basic introduction and exercise collection for other books that have appeared recently. Concerning the physical applications of the method ofzeta-function reg ularization here described, quite a big choice is presented. The reader must be warned, however, that I have not tried to explain the underlying physi cal theories in complete detail (since this is undoubtedly out of scope), but rather to illustrate - simply and clearly - the precise way the method must be applied. Sometimes zeta regularization is explicitly compared in the text with other procedures the reader is supposed to be more familiar with (such as cut-off or dimensional regularization).